Finally, the day had arrived, and after two postponements due to the heavy and continuous rainfall that had swollen the rivers and flooded the banks, I was packed and ready for a long day watching Beavers.
Writing those words still felt strange, but it was a fact I was off to see wild beavers living in their natural habitat.
I’ve known about this location for several years and followed the project with much interest, but for some inexplicable reason, I had not been here to see things for myself. There are planned trips here throughout the year where local Rangers or volunteers will take you to the most likely of several places the Beavers could appear, and most times, they get it right. I recommend the tours organised by Devon Wildlife Trust. I was fortunate to be guided by a wildlife photographer who knows the area and the local beavers well.
We arrived at the chosen site for the night and put up a small, dark tent that would offer meagre shelter from the intermittent drizzle, but it gave us a focal point and a base, and we set up our tripods and cameras.
The sun was nearly dipping below the horizon, and we switched to using the infrared light on our head torches to finish setting up. Although we were in super-stealth mode, people were walking their dogs while others were jogging, which made for a surreal scene.
I sat quietly, enjoying the relaxing river sounds, and saw a Heron, statuesque but highlighted against the far bank. The heron jabbed its long beak towards the bank, and a squeal was heard as it had caught a common frog. Despite the alarm call of the frog, within two flicks of the heron’s beak, it had centred the frog and swallowed it. The heron took a few more long-legged strides and re-positioned itself, hoping to find another meal.
After an hour or so, the pedestrian traffic on the riverbank had stopped, but we noticed a group of six people setting up a little way down the river. We were drawn to the bright lights of their torches, the whirring of their camera motors, and the length of their lenses; we smiled at each other as we pondered if they had or would see anything tonight.
That Heron had found a good spot as the next time I looked, it was holding a decent-sized fish in its beak and far less gracefully than with the frog, but it finally managed to swallow it. I was told it was a small trout.
The Tawny owls had begun their patrols for the night, and we could hear the calls as they told each other all the latest news from their travels.
Then, a silhouette emerged from the dark edges of my vision. I could see the movement of the water that reminded me of a bow wave from a narrowboat, and following the water’s movement, I looked through my scope and could see the head of a Beaver.
Although native to the UK, they were once widespread, but through persecution and habitat loss, they became virtually extinct from most of the UK, and, like so many of my generation and younger, I had never seen a wild Beaver before. I was crouched on the ground as if frozen to the spot as the Beaver went about its business of an early evening swim before it dipped under the water, only to surface again a few moments later but several metres away from its dive spot.
I’m pretty sure it was just having some fun before starting on its work for the night, but the short dips under the water provided a whole ream of pictures that are a beautiful memory of seeing my first wild beaver.
As the Beaver made its way beyond us and further down the river towards our fellow watchers, there was a sudden bright light put on the water, and the beaver disappeared under the water as the camera motors whirred frantically into life as they burst off hundreds of frames in seconds. I don’t know what they may have captured, but I suspect it would have been the surface of the water with no Beaver in sight.
We decided to follow the Beavers’s lead and not hang around. We left our base camp and, taking some basic kit, we set off towards one of the tributary areas where we could watch them around the dam they had built.
This felt so much better. It was wild and dark. I sat on my folding stool and quietly scanned the area with my scope. There was no activity in the Beaver pool or around the Dam area, but high up in a tall tree, I could see some corvids at their roost. I love how they huddle along the branch and the hierarchical structure as you progress higher up the tree.
I watched the Daubenton’s bats skilfully skim the beaver pond’s surface as they harvested insects for their evening meal. It was fascinating, and to be honest, I was already made up with my sightings, but the night was still young.
As we sat silently, enjoying the beautiful night, two Beavers had left their den below the dam and ventured out into the pond. The night was still, but there wasn’t a lot of light from the moon. There was enough to see the beavers shimmering in the silvery reflections from the water, but I knew my camera would struggle to get a decent image. No matter, I was happy to watch and take in the graceful way the beavers move, almost silently, through the water.
They were busy tonight. They had gone to the pool’s edge to our left, where two large willow trees had been felled. The trees looked like they had been there for a while as I looked through my night scope. You could see the side branches were already stripped, and large sections of bark had been taken off the top edge of the fallen tree.
They must be walking along the tree to harvest the bark that would have been for their food store this coming winter. I had never seen a Beaver walk along a fallen tree, but I became even more intrigued as the second tree was at an angle, maybe 45 degrees, and had patches of bark stripped off the top edge.
Now was not the time to ask questions, although they filled my head. Instead, I clicked the camera to the night mode and followed the pair of beavers as they foraged for fresh bark and leaves.
I was drawn to one I later was told was the male who went to a large old willow tree, with a circumference wide enough that I would have struggled to get my arms around and hold my own hands, and it began to feed. It was on its hind legs, slightly stretching as it reached up the tree and began scraping at the wood with its large front teeth.
I could hear the sound of the wood being stripped from the tree. I could only equate it to the sound of a razor-sharp chisel edge as someone far more skilled than me delicately chiselled away at a sculpture. The rhythmic scraping sound was mesmerising as I sat with the camera, focused on this one point. I hoped to see this, and it was everything I had imagined.
After their snacks, the two beavers met up and began grooming their fantastic fur. The dark brown coat is so thick, you can see how dense it is, and they reminded me of watching my local badgers grooming themselves around the set on a summer evening. Magical!
The pair of Beavers began their nightly routine of foraging for bark for food and constantly ferrying branches back to their underwater den.
Then, the attention changed. I had been sitting almost casually watching the bats as they skimmed along the still waters of the damned lake, scooping up copious amounts of insects, when a nudge from my colleague had me staring in almost disbelief.
One of the Beavers, possibly the male, was walking along the bow of a willow tree it had felled some time ago. In a desperate fight for survival, the tree had begun sending up new shoots from the edge of its trunk as it lay horizontally with its roots and a short stump still firmly planted in its original position.
The Beaver was climbing along the felled trunk and snacking on the bark as it made its way along the trunk towards what was left of the canopy. We sat in complete silence whilst in a heightened state of excitement – I had never seen a wild Beaver before tonight, and now I was watching one climbing along a tree!
Its progress was fast until it became distracted by the fresh new foliage, a tasty treat for a Beaver and well worth climbing along the trunk for. I had not heard of Beavers climbing before. Still, upon getting home and doing some research, I found a handful of reports of similar activity within Beaver groups; interestingly, two were from this pack in Devon. It may be a more common behaviour than many of us know.
We spent the whole night actively watching the beavers going about their business, and as the light began to creep above the horizon, we decided to pack up our equipment.
In that beautiful early morning light of summer, the Beavers looked magnificent in the water as the light danced around the area, and the reflections created miniature cascades of colours. It was like a small rainbow dancing just above the water where the bats had fed so well just a short while ago.
As we slowly walked back, I caught sight of a stunning dog fox with its russet coat and white chest patch almost shining in the early morning light. It slipped into the thicket a safe distance away. It watched us as we continued, its large bushy tail occasionally flicking in a pulsing motion as if it were sensing our footsteps heading away from it.
As we got back to the river, we startled a male blackbird whose alarm called, and the early morning sounds of the birds ceased immediately until they determined we were not a threat and began their excited chatting once again.
I returned to Raven, my campervan, made a cup of tea, sat, and watched the sunrise on a beautiful summer day, feeling happy and content that I had just enjoyed one of the most magical wildlife encounters I have ever had.